This invention relates to the processing of telephone calls.
It has been recognized in the art that many individuals who need to be communicated with are highly mobile. The prior art system of associating a telephone number with a particular telephone line at a particular location is inadequate to meet the needs of such highly mobile individuals. This inadequacy is partially overcome by a) call forwarding arrangements, including sequence routing of calls, b) mobile, e.g., cellular, telephones, and c) pagers, including two-way paging.
One prior art system addressing the needs of highly mobile individuals is disclosed in U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 08/129,795 entitled xe2x80x9cIncoming Communications Forwarding Technique Utilizing a Called Party Location Indicatorxe2x80x9d. In this system, calls are automatically forwarded by a private branch exchange (PBX) to a telephone that is located within close proximity of the called party, as indicated by the detected location of a two-way paging device on the person of the called party. In particular, receivers for determining the locations of called parties"" two-way pagers are fixedly associated with particular telephones. When a call is received for a particular called party, a page is transmitted to the called party""s pager. Based on the paging receiver receiving the response from the pager, a location of the pager is determined and the call is routed to the telephone that is determined to be closest to the called party. Disclosed variants of the system include 1) the ability to route the call to one or more alternate telephones that are close to the location of the called party if the telephone closest to the called party is busy, and 2) the ability to route the call to a voice messaging system if the call is not answered.
To implement such a system on a wide scale requires installation of a large infrastructure, a very costly undertaking. This is because of the need to install at least one paging receiver for each telephone to which the calls can be routed. The system is also limited because of the fixed nature of the relationship between the paging receivers and the telephones.
We have recognized that we can obtain benefits similar to those obtained by the Grimes et al. system but with considerably less investment and over a very wide area, e.g., nationwide. In accordance with the principles of the invention, a telephone network is arranged to give a telephone call placed to a called party""s personal telephone number a particular call treatment that is selected as a function of the particular one of a plurality of predefined areas in which the called party is determined to be located, each of the plurality of predefined areas having at least two telephone stations with different telephone numbers located therein. In accordance with an aspect of the invention, the associations of particular call treatments with respective ones of the areas is under control of the called party. Thus, calls to each called party receive customized call treatments. These call treatments need not be the same, even when the called parties are located in the same particular one of the areas. Moreover, the areas may be defined on a called party-by-called party basis.
The particular call treatments for association with one or more areas may include: (a) routing of the call to a particular wired telephone located within the area; (b) routing the call to a particular wired telephone outside of the area, (c) routing the call to a particular wireless telephone, (d) routing the call to a sequence of wired and/or wireless telephones within or outside of the area until the call is answered, and (e) routing the call to an automated answering platform. A default treatment may also be stored for handling calls that are placed to the called party when the called party is not within any area for which a call treatment is associated.
In a particular embodiment of the invention, the location of the called party is determined from the location of a two-way pager associated with the called party as detected by a paging antenna, e.g., tower, of a conventional two-way paging system that was not necessarily installed for use in completing telephone calls. For each personal telephone number, a table is stored which contains the information to associate one or more of the areas with a particular call treatment. The particular call treatment associated with an area is applied to calls to the personal telephone number when he is within that area.
In another embodiment of the invention, the location of the called party is determined from a global positioning system (GPS) receiver which is connected to, or incorporated in, the two-way pager associated with the called party. The areas would be defined by GPS coordinates rather than by paging tower location. Thus, the areas may be defined independent of the location of the paging towers.